A judge says he cannot nullify the marriage of a teenage mother who says she was forced at ‘gunpoint’ into becoming a bride when she was just 14.

The teenager, who was born in Britain and whose family has lived here for 40 years, says she was shipped out to Pakistan to contract a forced marriage with a 24-year-old man two years ago.

She told how she was subjected to ‘harrowing’ violence and menaced with a gun to go through with the ceremony – and was two weeks later forced to have sex with her ‘husband’, giving birth to his baby who is now aged just over one.

After she came forward with her account, her local authority took both her and her baby into care and asked Mr Justice Holman to formally declare that her marriage – which effectively made her a rape victim – could never have been recognised under English law.

Ah but English law is rather Sharia-friendly these days. Got to keep those Pakistanis marrying off their 14-year-old daughters well-disposed if Qatari cash is to flow into The City.

Mr Justice Holman said it was, according to the girl’s account, a ‘grave example of a marriage which was forced under considerable duress, involving at one stage the production of a gun and physical violence upon the girl’.

Her father, who moved to the UK 40 years ago and has been a British citizen for three decades, and her older brother had accompanied her on the trip to Pakistan, which culminated in her becoming an unwilling bride.

The judge added: ‘The marriage was consummated about two weeks later, after further threats to her if she did not permit her husband to have sexual intercourse with her.’

The judge ruled that – although the girl was under extreme duress and aged under 16 at the time – he was barred by statute from granting a declaration that her marriage was ‘at its inception, void’.

The court earlier heard that the girl’s ‘husband’ was not named on her baby’s birth certificate and his whereabouts are unknown. However, he still has the rights of a ‘putative or non-marital father’ and could conceivably play a part in the care proceedings.

He could rape her at gunpoint again. I assume that would satisfy Sharia requirements.